Farting Around
by Axie Flamesilocks
Summary: Dante and Vergil deal with math, pizza, girls with guns, teachers with schizophrenia, and the powers that be in a battle to, um...do whatever the hell they want. AU: Mild DantexLady.


I wrote this for my brother like forever ago, and I'm mainly posting it because Dante and Vergil are too much fun and I'm kind of proud of all the witticisms in here (yay egomania). It struck me as pretty smooth, but it doesn't make a whole lot of sense, and I think it's more an exercise in character than anything else.

Set in DMC3, ish. AU, ish. I wrote it just after DMC3 came out, so if I end up continuing, Nero will figure out a way to elbow in.

Pairing is DantexLady, in the standard "OMG I HOPE U DAI" setup.

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Somewhere to start a story. Well, life. Life is a bundle of mistakes and complications that somehow evens out in the end (usually, maybe, okay _never_), and every individual has to decide whether or not they really want to unravel it. Because in the end, it may not be at all worth it, and you might've lost a lot more than you gained. But, in the event that you do, there are two things in life you can count on, and those are taxes and pizza.

And half the time you can't even count on the damn pizza.

About then, Dante stood and decided that was quite enough theorizing for one, oh, decade. Since thoughts on pizza tended to make him crave the stuff, he got off the roof and went downstairs to raid the fridge. Along the way, he noticed the damn phone was off the hook again, but hell if he was gonna do anything about it. Instead, he focused his attention on his target, and located in a second the pizza from last night. It was a bit cold, but he still stuck one piece in his mouth and prepared three others for the microwave. As he set the rest down, he looked up and out the screen door, and what he saw made him stop dead. Slowly but surely, the slice in his mouth slid out and hit the floor with a wet splat.

Now, for the reader to understand the gravity of the situation, they must realize that for the pizza to have the physical capability of falling from Dante's mouth, something wicked and totally awesome must have just happened. Dante was known to run, jump, fight, and occasionally sleep without ever removing a given pizza slice from his mouth. There was only one thing on God's green earth that could tear his attention away from it.

Girls.

Specifically the cute brunette with the turned-up nose and undeniably sexy black bikini, which accented her curves _far_ too well to be natural, who was standing just outside and giving him a fiery look. "What're you staring at?" she demanded through the screen.

This snapped him out of it. "Nothing," he said sharply. "The hell you doing here, Lady?" he demanded. Her real name was Annie or Mary or Lori or something, but Dante didn't much bother with that and people tended to call her Lady anyhow, so he didn't strain his few nice glands any more than he had to. Whereas Dante and his twin brother were seniors at the local high school, she was still a lowly junior, and therefore inferior to his coolness. She lived across the street from him at the pretty red house with white trimmings, and Dante was beginning to wonder why he was remembering so much about her just now.

Oh—and her dad was a _weirdo_.

At any rate, she had no business hanging around here, sexy bikini or no, so Dante was getting pissed off. "I came to see Vergil," she said in answer to his question. "I'm throwing a pool party at my house, and I wanted to know if he was interested. Lucia and Trish are coming, too."

That only pissed Dante off more. Why was it that Vergil had to be so damn good with the ladies lately? "I'll let him know," he said to her, waving a hand. "Buzz off."

"Hmph." Lady didn't look like she trusted him—and he didn't blame her, lucky Vergil if he ever figured out there was a pool party—but she clearly had better things to do with her time, so she cleared out fairly efficiently.

It took Dante a while to realize he was hearing another voice. Since he was cursing at the damn pizza for falling and the damn floor for being dirty and damn God for doing this to a poor lost soul like him, he didn't notice at first, and he gradually began to recognize the voice of his brother. "What?" he said into the receiver of the phone that had recently been off the hook.

"Hang up the damn phone!" Vergil told him in a voice that was slightly hoarse. "You're the one who used it last."

"No, actually, I'm not," Dante reminded him. "You're the one who's talking with Vamp all the time."

"Her name's Nevan."

"Whatever."

Nevan was Vergil's girlfriend (for the time being, he rotated about once a month), although Dante thought Nevan was a really stupid name and he came up with much more creative things like that weirdo redhead, that stupid whore, hey you, and that freaky bitch.

"And I wasn't talking with Nevan," Vergil added. "I intend to tell her it's over tomorrow. Trish called. She said there's a party over at Lady's."

Dante cursed. So much for that—but it really didn't matter to him what the hell stupid Lady decided to do. Even if it meant she'd invite Vergil and not him. _But she does look good in that bikini…_ He shook his head fiercely with a muted grunt. "Fine. You going?" he asked.

"Yeah, and you're coming with me."

The younger of the twins (by two minutes, but younger nonetheless) blinked at that. "I am? Why?" he asked. If he had been in a worse mood, he would've flatly turned down the offer—or command, more like—but it surprised him that Vergil would do that. They were brothers after all, but that didn't mean they had to tolerate one another.

"Because. Now hang up the damn phone and come get changed already." Click.

Dante looked at the receiver briefly before hanging up. Vergil was doing something nice. That was becoming less and less common lately, but that didn't mean Dante was stupid enough to turn it down. He hung up, turning to leave.

The phone rang.

_Damn irony._

It was one phone call and five minutes later that the two of them found themselves walking down the street, towels slung around their shoulders, which were lightly slathered with sunscreen. Vergil had a dollop of the stuff on his nose, mainly because it burned easily, and he was wearing a swim top in addition to trunks due to his more conservative nature. Dante, though, looked good and knew it, and saw no reason to hide it.

This was a fairly new neighborhood for the both of them because they had moved into it just this year with Mom, since Dad had been conspicuously absent all their lives and they knew better than to question it. As a result, Dante had left behind his good friends—with whom he liked to party day in and day out (_That Lara chick was really hot…_)—and ran into these cold, studious people like Lady and Trish, who were more Vergil's type than his. So he no longer had much interest in having friends, and had instead fastened his sights on pizza almost exclusively.

Speaking of which, he was beginning to regret the decision to leave those three slices behind. He could've eaten one on the way, but then, Lady's house was approaching swiftly. It wasn't that far to begin with, but Dante didn't like walking places. As they drew closer to the fence in the back, over which they could see heads bobbing about and a beach ball flying overhead, an alluring scent filtered between the fence boards and found its way to Dante's nose. Vergil smelled it, too, and his nose wrinkled in disgust.

He put out an arm, stopping Dante in his tracks. "Swim first," he said firmly, "eat later. Or do you want cramps again like last time?"

"I can handle cramps," Dante told him. "Besides, why do you care anyway?" he added, smacking Vergil with his towel and moving to the gate. "Hey, fellas," he greeted the boys standing by the hot dogs. They looked up and frowned, then turned to consult amongst themselves. "Or not," Dante muttered. "Doesn't matter. I don't care."

"I didn't know you'd bring _him_," Lady said sharply to Vergil the moment he was within the confines of her backyard. He rolled his eyes and tried to walk by, but she stepped in front of him, wrapping her fingers—which felt more like talons—around his wrist firmly. "He's got no invitation," she hissed. "You know how Dad gets about that."

"Neither do I," Vergil pointed out. "Besides, Mom made me promise I'd involve him if something like this came up."

Lady sighed laboriously. "Isn't there some way you can get rid of him?"

At that, Vergil's eyebrow twitched. "He's my brother," he said to her in a tone she didn't think she could argue with, tilting her face up with one finger under her chin. "Be nice. Got it?" And he yanked his arm away from her, stalking towards the pool.

She watched him go, looking slightly puzzled. Then Trish called her attention to the snack bar, and she glared at Vergil's back briefly before moving away.

Dante, as it turned out, wasn't nearly as bored as he expected. Lady had a few flighty friends, it seemed, and these clustered around him like scantily clad moths, attracted to his buff chest and washboard abs. "Bet you could swim five laps without even getting tired," one of them said to him in a laughing, high-pitched voice, running a hand along his biceps. He forgot her name—it was Linda or Laura or something.

Some guys in this situation probably would've been modest, but modesty wasn't a word in Dante's vocabulary. "Probably could," he said, smirking devilishly. He wasn't entirely sure he could—after all, it'd been about a year since he'd done anything strenuous—but he was still more muscular than the other boys, even with his pizza-and-TV lifestyle. Why was that, he wondered vaguely.

"No, he could do ten," another girl said in a deep, sexy voice, pulling close enough that he could feel her breasts press against his shoulder.

He LIKED her.

"You name it, I'll do it," he said to her, and drew so close their noses were almost touching. She blushed—a deep, fiery red that spread over her cheeks, and smiled.

"If you can negotiate a way onto the roof, it'd be really neat to see you jump off," she suggested. "Brandon tried that last month, but he chickened out."

"Yeah," a third girl sneered. "Nobody loves a chicken."  
And that was true, in Dante's opinion, but what was she trying to do, kill him? Still, as her eyes burned into his, doing crazy stunts like that got him a lot of friends last year. It really couldn't hurt, could it? "You owe me," he told her, poking her in the chest just above her cleavage. "Big time."

This spawned a resounding giggle throughout the group, and Dante slipped out from the center, proceeding leisurely to the ladder out of the pool. That done, there still remained the problem of reaching the roof. But, he decided, he could figure out a way.

"What's he doing?" Lady quipped to Vergil, raising an eyebrow at the spot where Dante was scaling the wall.

"Something stupid, knowing him," Vergil said without turning around. "Why do you care? I thought you didn't even want him here, but you can't seem to take your eyes off him."

Lady's head whipped around so fast it looked like she might've hurt herself. "I'm not staring," she said sharply. "He's climbing on _my house_. I think I should be concerned, don't you?"

Vergil didn't turn his attention from his lemonade glass, shifting it slightly so the ice swiveled about. "Maybe," he admitted. Then he turned around and his eyes met hers. "By the way, it so happens that I'm looking for a new girlfriend."

The brunette frowned. "Weren't you going out with that Jane girl? Or wait—is it Nevan now? I forget."

"No one, as of right now," he told her, shrugging. Slow and deliberately, he let his eyes slip down over her scanty body and back up. "Interested?" he asked, a slight lilt in his tone.

"Hmph." She turned away abruptly—she just seemed like an abrupt _person_ to him—but he could see the blush that hit her cheeks before she could hide it.

Meanwhile, Dante had reached the top of the roof and was looking down at the pool. He'd forgotten that Lady happened to live in a two-story house, and he was remembering that now as the ground seemed to twist and bend under him. The pool looked too far away to reach, and the barbeque to his left was too close for comfort. But hey—Dante? Back down in front of his ladies? Nuh-uh. He could still stall a bit, though.

"Hey, Vergil!" he called, waving. Even from that distance, he could see Vergil's shoulders slump as he slowly, laboriously turned around. When he saw Dante, his eyes visibly rolled and he shook his head.

"You die and I'm throwing out all the pizza in the whole house," he called up.

Dante probably would have gone into shock if the thought was capable of coming up in his mind, but it wasn't, so he didn't. It was just too painful to think about.

"Come on, Dante!"

"Whoooh!"

"Jump! Do it!"

_Can't ignore the screaming fans,_ Dante thought to himself. He shrugged nonchalantly and prepared, drawing his arms back and bending his knees. Somewhere in between that motion and the inevitable fall, he was in the air, seeming almost to float much farther than he'd intended. Time seemed to slow as he realized he was almost right over the far edge of the pool, and his eyes widened in horror. But then he fell towards the water, flipping over so he was falling headfirst. His skull cracked audibly against the edge of the pool and then he was underwater, feeling a resounding pain in his head. But as he broke the surface of the water, it seemed to vanish. He rubbed the back of his head briefly, but then the girls surrounded him, their voices rising and falling excitedly. The thrill of the event came back to him, and he let out a wild whoop. " 'D you see that?" he called to Vergil.

"Yes, I saw it," Vergil told him in a clearly unimpressed tone, not turning from where he was chatting with some of his scholar friends. "You did something incredibly stupid and lived. Congratulations."

Meh, Vergil. Dante didn't let it bother him, as usual—instead, he turned his attentions to the girls, many of whom were eager to get to know him better. Just then, his Pizza Sense tingled sharply, and he looked up to see that only one slice was lying on the platter next to the hot dogs. His mouth dropped open in utter shock. How could he let that happen? He must have been too focused on the girls to notice—but it wouldn't happen again! He swore it on…um…pizza! Yeah!

" 'Scuse me, ladies," he said to them, parting them and heading for the ladder again. By possessing the last piece, he could repent yet for his wrongdoing. So he approached it, seizing it by the crust and popping the edge in his mouth. Its intoxicating aroma filled his nostrils, its delicate flavor on his tongue, and then—

…Well, then he was covered in something wet, and cold, and goopy.

Tossing away the ruined pizza, he rubbed the stuff away from his eyes. He could hear hysterical laughter behind him, and several various snickers and snorts. Then he looked down and saw…pink? Pink. He was covered—no, completely submerged—in pink goop.

"Still think you're all that, pizza boy?" he heard someone ask him, and his eyes narrowed as they locked with Lady's. A cold, dark laughter found its way to his throat, and he shook his head slowly. Walking over to the hot dogs, he seized the bottle of ketchup off the grill. With one flick of his thumb, the cap was off, and he turned it upside down right over her head. By now, the entire party's attention was on them, and a quiet "Oooooo!" filled the yard.

Lady, whose mouth was open in shock, smacked his hand away and glared at him. She stomped over to the sundae section, picking up the can of sprinkles, and thrust a shower of them at him. They stuck to the pink goop, despite his attempts to brush them off, and she walked around him until he was almost completely covered in them. Then she put a few on her palm and blew them in his face, tossing the can behind her and waiting for his move.

Well. In return, Dante strode to the sundae section as well, only he took the whole tub of ice cream. Seeing it, Lady started to back away, but it was too late for her. He ripped off the top and punched the bottom, so almost all the ice cream flew forward and landed on her with a wet splotch. She wiped it away from her eyes and nodded slowly. "Okay," she said in a deadly quiet voice. "Okay, you asked for it."

"Oh, really?" Dante asked quietly, his voice also calculating. "Bring it, bitch."

Several of the girls gasped at that, but Lady never wavered. She crossed to the far end of the table, where there was a flat cardboard box. This she opened to reveal the perfect, still simmering cheese pizza that hadn't yet been distributed. Slowly and deliberately, she took out each piece and let it fall to the ground until yellow triangles littered the grass. Then she stomped on each one, digging her heel deep into the center so the hot cheese mingled with the grass and the grease leaked out into the dirt.

Oh. No. She. Didn't.

Dante went into shock. She didn't. She couldn't have. Was it humanly possible to so evilly, so completely destroy such a beautiful thing? "Oh, bitch," he whispered. "You really, really didn't have to do this to yourself." He took a step backward.

Two-tone eyes widened in horror as Lady realized what he was about to do. "Dante, don't—!"

"Sorry," he said in a voice that told her he was the furthest thing from it, "but you leave me no choice." And he fell backwards into the pool, letting the goop and sprinkles leak out into the water. Girls screamed and went running for towels, some of them wiping goop off their faces and others muttering curses and glaring. Dante didn't get out until he had quite thoroughly cleaned the goop out of his hair, at least, and by that time most of it was off his body. Lady was glaring at him, the epitome of rage and fury, and he smirked. "Let's see it filter _that_," he said sharply, flipping his towel over one shoulder, and walked almost leisurely out of the yard.

As soon as he got out of the party area, his mood soured abruptly. He could hear Vergil's footsteps behind him, and he knew it was because Vergil knew him better than anyone—Vergil knew they'd gotten to him. "I made you all laugh, huh? Go back to your friends," he said sharply.

"Dante, I had nothing to do with that," Vergil told him in a tight voice.

"Right. Since when do you pass up a chance to humiliate me?"

"Since now." Vergil's voice was unusually loud, and Dante turned. His brother's identical silver eyes were narrowed, and while he looked strong, his arms were crossed in his old gesture of insecurity. "It was probably Lady's idea, even though I told her to let up on you. I wouldn't do that to you unless you had friends, you know that."

Dante threw his arms up, turning away again. "Whatever, Vergil. It's not like there's ever been a time I didn't have friends, so I don't know how I'm supposed to know that."

"Dante, listen—"

"I don't want to!" the younger boy said fiercely, glaring. "Go back to your stupid friends, Vergil, and leave me the hell alone!" With that, he started running, turning to cross the road home.

"Dante! Dante, stop! _Dante_!"

He missed the note of fear in Vergil's voice until the last second, when the tires screeched right next to him and he looked up at the truck careening toward him. His mind and body tensed at the same time and he froze in the middle of the street, too surprised to move. Then Vergil's body collided with his and both of them hit the ground and skidded to the curb. Pain riddled his left arm and back, and as Vergil got up he caught sight of the long red trail on the road.

"Dante, are you all right?"

"I'm…blood…" was all he could manage, trying to point.

"Yes, I know, but are you okay? Can you stand?"

Dante frowned at him, wondering why it was Vergil didn't seem to understand. He let Vergil help him up all the same, grimacing and running a hand down his back. His skin felt raw and wet, if there was any skin left to speak of, and it trickled unpleasantly down his wrist and back.

The owner of the truck had pulled the vehicle to a complete stop, and he ran toward them. "Are you boys all right?" he asked, his eyes widening at the sight of the blood.

"We'll be fine," Vergil told him shortly. "It's better if you don't get involved."

"Oh, lord!" the man said, his fat face paling. "We need to get that boy to the ER—c'mon, we can take my truck—"

"I said," the older boy said in an iron tone, "we'll be fine. Dante, is it any better?"

"It…um…it…" Dante felt along his back in surprise, twisting in an attempt to see over his shoulder. "It's disappearing…!"

"See?" Vergil said pointedly to the man. "C'mon. We'd better get home," he told Dante. He took Dante's right wrist and pulled it around his shoulders to support him, starting down the sidewalk back to their house.

"What is that, though?" Dante asked him, wincing a bit since the wound was still open. "Why's it…doing that?"

Vergil hesitated. "I'm not really sure. I noticed it a couple years back, when I got a deep scratch from an accident at school. It was gone much faster than I thought it'd be, and after that I realized that it was like that with almost anything. If you noticed, we never seem to get hurt that bad—but when we do, it goes away almost instantly. So I figured this wouldn't be any different."

"Yeah, it's…I think it's completely gone now," Dante told him, pulling away and standing on his own. "Man, that really hurt, though."

There was an awkward silence on both sides as they continued walking, listening to the sound of the truck revving as it passed them by. Then Vergil looked away. "You…you scared the hell out of me, Dante. Don't ever do that again, or I promise I _will_ hurt you."

Dante's mouth was half open to impart a derisive comment in response, but then it closed as he watched Vergil for a few moments.

"What?"

"Nothing. Just…" He grinned. "Thanks for saving my ass, Vergil."

"Anytime."

Seven in the afternoon. Dante sat in his room, chewing on a particularly cheesy slice from the fridge and keeping his eyes riveted on the television, where two faintly Western-looking men were engaging in a gratuitously violent shootout. He'd taken a shower or three to rid himself of the pink goop from the party, mainly because it smelled like coconuts and he couldn't _stand_ coconuts, so he was dressed in jeans. That was it, just jeans. After all, if he didn't require a shirt, he didn't wear one.He'

"Dante?" he heard Vergil say from the door.

"Mmm."

"Did Mom call or anything?"

Dante frowned and looked at the phone. "No," he said after a few minutes. "Why? What time is it?"

"About to be seven thirty," Vergil told him, glancing at the clock. "She's supposed to be home at four or so…"

Dante shrugged. "She probably just has to work late or something. She'll be home in time for dinner."

"You think?"

"Yeah."

Vergil was silent for a few moments longer, and the guy on screen got his brains blown out. "I'm gonna go look for her," he said abruptly, and Dante heard his footsteps going in the general direction of the stairs.

He sighed, clicking off the TV—after all, he'd seen this one three times and after the one guy died, nothing really happened—and rose. Kicking a few toy guns from his younger years to one side, he followed until he caught up with Vergil. "Probably a good idea," he said. "I'd like to ask her about that whole healing thing. Seems like something she'd know about, being Mom."

"Probably," Vergil said in response. They left the house, locking the door behind them, and Vergil slipped into the driver's seat of the convertible the boys had to share.

Dante glared at him. "How come you get to drive?"

"I'm older."

"Two minutes is _nothing_."

"Are you coming or what?"

Muttering something incoherent and probably inappropriate, Dante slipped into the passenger seat and pulled on the seatbelt as Vergil backed into the road. They drove for a while, and it gradually occurred to Dante that he had no idea where they were going. "Where do we start?" he asked Vergil.

"Her work place," the older boy replied simply. "That maintenance building."

"Where's that?"

"I don't know."

"Oh, great."

Now, if Lady or Trish or Lucia or pretty much any woman in the world were in the car with them, they would advise the obvious; ask directions. However, they were conspicuously absent in all this, and Dante and Vergil were both men. Men don't ask directions. It's a fact of life.

So they drove around for about an hour not asking directions and continuing to not ask directions. Then it dawned on Dante that Vergil was getting them nowhere, and perhaps he should take the wheel instead. "Pull over," he said.

"Why?"

"I want to drive awhile. You have no idea where you're going."

"You don't either."

"That's not the point."

"Then what's the point?"

"I want to drive."

Vergil rolled his eyes. "Fine." He pulled into a parking lot and handed the wheel over, perhaps a bit unwisely, to the wilder and more accident prone Dante. In fact, they very nearly had an accident just pulling out of the lot, if only because Dante happened to miss the van coming toward them. His foot hit the floor and they shot out into the road, hit the curb, and almost caused a pile-up. "Damn idiots on the road," Dante muttered as he straightened the car and started in a random direction.

At this, Vergil shot him a withering look.

"What?"

"_Nothing_."

They drove for about a half an hour, and Vergil started falling asleep. He was jerked back to reality sharply when he noticed the car veering right. "Dante, turn left."

"Why?"

"We're about to hit that car. Turn left."

"I'm changing lanes."

"Yeah, but you're going too far! Turn left!"

"It's fine, I got it."

"It'll make me feel better. Turn left? Please? Before we die?"

Dante muttered something "bastard" and turned left. Beside him, his twin relaxed visibly and tensed up a second later as they ran into the curb. "DANTE!"

"Fine. You wanna drive?"

"Yes, I think that would be best."

The younger boy managed to pull over without killing anyone, and they switched out again. While Dante sulked in the passenger seat, Vergil yawned widely and turned the car homeward. "She's probably already back now," he said. "Besides, I think we have a curfew on this driving stuff. Supposed to be in at ten or so."

"Damn cops."

"And I'm tired. So we're going home."

Dante didn't reply to that, probably because he was thinking the same thing. Vergil had to wake him when they finally pulled into the drive at their house. Their mother's blue Saturn wasn't there, but both of them were too tired to really worry about it. "Who knows," Dante said as they climbed the stairs to their respective rooms. "Maybe she's got a new job, or maybe she had to go on a trip and forgot to tell us, or…" He yawned. "Or maybe it's late and I don't give a shit."

"That's the last time I let you drive," Vergil muttered. "How the fuck'd you get your license, anyhow?"

"Stole it."

"Oh, ha ha. 'Night."

" 'Night."

Math was a scourge upon the world, a curse upon the human race, and an insult to God. It was also friggin' boring as hell, and for that reason Dante tapped his pen against his desk in a bored kind of way and let glazed eyes (out of boredom, likely) roll up towards the ceiling, which also looked rather bored somehow. He was feeling anxious for some reason, and credited it to the fact that he and Vergil still hadn't tracked down wherever Mom was. The math teacher seemed to be explaining how fractions had something to do with juggling and hopping bunnies, so silver eyes rolled and Dante groaned loudly. _Jesters make really awful teachers._ Unfortunately, his growing anxiety did nothing to help his currently bored state, and since he didn't want to focus his attention on the horrible teacher, he looked out the window.

It occurred to him after a while that he couldn't see the sky. This didn't normally happen, since math class was on the ninth floor and not many buildings went much higher than nine floors. So unless one of those greedy corporations had built something without him noticing—or…

"Oh, _no_," he muttered under his breath, gradually recognizing the cracks in the stone and the ancestral gloom the place seemed to radiate. Lady looked up from her seat on the other side of the room, and crossed to his side, looking up at the side of it. A few other students gravitated to his side of the room briefly, but then sat back down with muted sighs and groans. Lady stalked back to her desk, yanked a startlingly huge gun out of her backpack, and stomped out the door muttering curses.

Class resumed.

The Temen-Ni-Gru used to appear about once every thousand or so years, but lately it showed up once or twice a month, according to the newspapers. Normally, some of the resident half-demons would chime in and convince it to sink back into the ground, and otherwise the city had simply accepted the fact that chaos would reign for a while every so often. And because Lady always seemed to get involved, Dante strongly suspected her weirdo dad had something to do with it.

Sighing, he got up from his desk, pulling his sword out of the sheath beside it. After all, he'd faced enough combat (mainly training or controlled fighting) that he had his weapon concealed somewhere with him almost all the time. And because math was so freakin' boring, he decided to join in the merry-making and lend a hand this month.

"And just where do you think you're going?" the teacher/jester/maniac asked him, putting his hands on his hips in a show of power. In the jester suit, though, it simply looked ridiculous. Additionally, an abnormally huge booger was hanging out of the teacher's abnormally long nose, but Dante decided to let him figure that one out on his own.

"Oh, me?" Dante asked casually, resting the flat of the blade on one shoulder. "Bathroom. Be back in a minute," he said, pointing.

This seemed to strike the jester as being marvelously funny, because he laughed for several minutes. "Have fun!" he said, waving Dante towards the door.

"Freakish weirdo," Dante muttered, starting away. As he started for the bottom of the school building, he reconsidered the events of the past day. Certainly, the idea of instant healing was an unsettling one, and pointed to the idea of him being a half-demon—but he'd only recently heard of those. That was impossible, right? Just because he didn't know who his dad was didn't mean…but then, there was his white hair and silver eyes…but—no! "I'm _not_ a half-demon," he declared in a low voice, punching the wall. "I'm not a half-anything. I've got to be a whole _something_," he decided, and that was the end of it.

The half-demons (and men with big guns) were congregated around the base of the Temen-Ni-Gru, looking up. At the front of them stood an imposing man with a black moustache and virtually no other bodily hair, frowning out into the crowd. "Men, ready the ammunition," he boomed into the microphone. "Half-demons will be deployed shortly. Repeat, half-demons will be deployed shortly. Remember, we are using the buddy system—be aware of your buddy at all times. Hold hands with your buddy if necessary, and most importantly, do not allow your buddy to kill more things than you."

A can hit the Temen-Ni-Gru behind him and a fiery half-demon shouted, "Get _on_ with it already! Let's _party_!" This was answered with a roar of approval from the group of half-demons.

"Partying sounds about good right now," Dante remarked, but he eyed the entry line warily. It wasn't that he was scared to go in, but he and Vergil were as yet deemed too young and inexperienced to enter. Also, they were registered as humans, and not physically fit to enter at all—but he would figure a way around that someday. Then there was also the fact that he wouldn't dream of sneaking in without Vergil—especially not when their fighting styles complimented each other so well. So he lingered by the guns, which usually needed protecting from the demons that slipped past the half-demon front. "Whadd'you see?" he asked the nearest man, bending towards the scope.

"Looks like somebody's standing on the top," the man replied, adjusting the gun. "Spreading his arms, laughing, acting powerful—we're looking mighty villainous today, mister," he added wryly. "Tasteless pink book, though—oh well." He fired.

Dante looked up in time to see a tiny figure fall off the top of the Temen-Ni-Gru. "Nice shot," he said, whistling.

"Thanks."

"All right, half-demons! Deploy!" the man with the thick moustache ordered, and the half-demons poured into the various entrances around the base of the structure. Dante watched them with a sigh, as he always did, wishing he had their amazing strength, their powers of regeneration…

Okay, this was getting weird.

"Gun duty, as usual?" came a voice to his left, and he turned.

"Yeah," he said to Vergil, who was approaching with his katana slipped gracefully out of the way. Typical Vergil. "You too, by the look of things," he added.

"Not quite," Vergil began, but then they were interrupted. A division of demons had slipped out into the streets, so Vergil and Dante took up their positions beside the swordsmen and kicked ass for several moments until the enemy's numbers dispersed. When they had, Vergil approached the younger boy and brushed a bit of blood aside from a deep cut that was already healing. "You know why you get hurt, don't you?" he asked then, clicking his tongue.

Dante blinked at him, so he figured ten to one the red-clad boy had no idea what he was talking about.

"You take too many risks when you fight," Vergil explained patiently as he helped him up. "You try to take on too many at a time, and then you end up in a bad situation. Don't you ever learn?"

This was met with a smirk. "Guess not," Dante said, shrugging. "Besides, if I tried to fight like you did, I'd never get any action," he added.

Vergil's eyes narrowed.

"Coming in on the left!" the man at the microphone reported, and the boys sprang into action again.

"Anyway," Vergil continued later, brushing demon dust off his robes and speaking as if he'd never actually been interrupted. "Based on our unnatural appearance, uncommon amount of strength, and unusual ability to regenerate, I've decided we must be half-demons."

"No," Dante insisted immediately, as the older boy knew he would. "That's just…messed up. Yeah we're a little weird, but so's everyone."

Vergil rolled his eyes. "Don't let your drive to conform mislead you," he said simply.

"I don't conform to anyone or anything!" Dante replied, fuming.

"Then why do you ignore the obvious truth?" Vergil asked pointedly, but the younger boy didn't seem to have an answer for that one. "I've read into this, Dante. I know what I'm talking about," he added. Then he hesitated. "Of the registered half-demons, only a fraction have white hair. Most of those have yellow or red eyes. Silver, though, is so uncommon it's restricted to only two families in the entire demon or human world."

"If that's the case, why isn't anyone freaking out about us?" Dante asked in a move calculated to shatter the entire argument.

Vergil, though, shook his head. "For one, both families supposedly disappeared. And for another, most people don't know the specifics of their physical characteristics," he added. "Lastly, we're new here. There were almost no half-demons at our last home."

Dante fumed. Why the hell did Vergil have to be so smart? "Fine," he said finally. "What families?"

"One of them was gone too long ago for us to even be around," Vergil said to begin with. "And the other…" He hesitated again. "Have you heard of the lost sons of Sparda?" he asked finally.

The younger boy looked at him and blinked. "That—you—he—just—_no_!" he exclaimed. "No way. No _fucking_ way."

"Think about it. Our father's been absent for most of our lives," Vergil reminded him. "Mom's never said anything about it, but she's obviously not a demon and we didn't get it from her. So our father must have had the silver eyes that belonged almost exclusively to Sparda's family, and since Sparda fits easily into the generation before us…"

Dante shook his head slowly. "But he—but that…!"

Thunder crackled against the sky, and Vergil looked up at the Temen-Ni-Gru. "We'll go in next month," he said quietly. "That's the only place where we can find some real answers." He turned to look at Dante, who seemed to have lost the ability to speak. "In the meantime, we'll want to go help Lady. Looks like her dad's really hammered," he explained. When Dante didn't move, he sighed and took his brother's arm to haul him away.

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A/N: Um, there's like, seven more pages or so before I ended up stopping. If this gets a good response, I'll post them, and I might continue if the muse cooperates. It probably will eventually—somehow, those two are just more vivid than my usual fare (KH, KH, KH, and more KH after that).


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